Bee Picture

Yesterday I woke up feeling pretty crappy after eating some questionable food. I was lazy and sat outside in the sun hoping it would dry my hair before I caught a cold to boot.

Sure enough, along came a bee. She looks pretty focused. And you can see on her back legs, there are packs of pollen, they're an orange/yellow colour.

In June I hope to have more bee pictures up.

Easter Weekend

I have a bunch of photos here, and a story below from an event that happened today, Easter Monday.

Driving down the main drag in Lusaka

A fancy mall in Lusaka - yup they have SUBWAY here too

I went to Livingston this weekend with another EWB volunteer, this is where Victoria Falls is.

Ashley and I, she was the one who needed to leave the country for a new visa.

Victoria Falls - Mosi-au-Tunyi (the smoke that thunders)

A nice Zambian couple fishing off the dock on the Zambezi river.

We took a cruise on the Zambezi River and saw some Hippos.

Returned from the falls to find the Easter Bunny had paid me a visit!

Five Dollars

I am the one who is sitting the hammock as the morning sun warms the air. I am the one enjoying the breeze, the birds singing and a great book on this Easter Monday.

The hammock, where I read after work.

In the distance I hear what sounds like the neighbour tapping a nail...I continue reading. The tapping continues and eventually I hear "Mr. Marke" very faintly, I look over and see that someone at the gate is looking through the small hole and sees me. I hear it again, "Mr. Marke", I now recognize its Mr. Ngulube at the gate and its locked. I spent last Saturday with him and another co-worker (Thomas). We walked across town, met Thomas's family and spent a couple hours at the bar where they treated me to a couple of beers.

After he is in the gate he asks if Barb is home, she is the wife to Dan Ball, who is the owner of Forest Fruits. Barb is a trained nurse and is famous among the employees for helping them out with heath problems. Propolys and tea tree oil are the two medicines she has sent my way in the past 3 weeks of living here.

He then explains to me that his wife is pregnant, and going into labour. I realize the severity of the visit and quicken my pace as we walk to the house. I wonder if he is going to ask Barb to deliver the baby. My mind races. He calmly and politely speaks with Barb as I wait inside to give them privacy. She then fills me in that in Zambia, you must bring your own supplies with you to the health clinic. Supplies like - a razor blade to cut the chord, something to tie the chord, a garbage bag, gloves...and a diaper for the baby.

If you don't show up with these things, the clinic will likely turn you away.

Imagine, the fragile state a pregnant women is in...let alone the new life that is in the balance.

My sister in Calgary is pregnant now also. This will be her second. The amount of money and time that goes into preparing for delivering a baby is astounding, it is something that is made a high priority in Canada. Giving birth is just one component.

I go back out to speak with Mr. Ngulube and I ask him how many children he has. A very big smile grows as he says, this will be our fifth. Immediately afterwards he felt it was necessary to justify this number...as if I didn't understand why he had so many. He said "you white people have been blessed, all your children survive. Here we must have many because not all of them live". I explained to him that I understood perfectly, and in fact one of my siblings did not make it through birth, so I have just two sisters instead of three.

"Life is raw here." Barb says to me after he leaves. "Imagine what it's like in rural areas where women have to walk 5 km to even have a chance of getting turned away at the clinic"

I am now the one that feels a bit sick in my stomach as I consider the money in my back pocket. I have $60 american dollars and the equivalent to $15 in Zambian Kwacha's. I can't help but imagine how these couple of pieces of paper can so easily be translated into helping lives here. The difference between a new baby and a miscarriage is sometimes a matter of a few supplies that may cost a dollar or two in Canada, and maybe a cab ride to the clinic which is likely to cost a couple of dollars. In total, five dollars would increase the chances of success. The money in my pocket is enough for 15 women in labour.

Trying to make some sense of it all.

I looked up some stats.

% of population under the age of 15
Zambia --> 50%
Canada --> 18%

Life expectancy
Zambia --> 35 years
Canada --> 80 years

Infant Mortality Rate (# of children who don't make it to age of 5)
Zambia --> 98.4/1000
Canada --> 4.8/1000 (ie. 20 times more likely to make it to the age of 5)

I read about the demographic transition, and maybe I now better understand what is happening and possibly what needs to happen to improve the situation.

As I type I realize Mr. Ingulube may be just arriving at a clinic with his wife since he likely walked the 40 minutes back to his house before heading out with his wife....

learning

(photos added just below)

I like to learn. I like to learn that someone figured out a better way to do something, and there is this miracle that exists which allows me to do this new something, maybe its the miracle of literature, or television or radio...or maybe its how to call home from Zambia.

I like to learn that I'm wrong about something too. Each time this happens, I become better at avoiding being wrong in the same way again.

I also like knowing what to learn, and I don't like not-knowing what I don't know. (an unconscious incompetence)

The other day I was at a pretty fancy grocery store, there was no one in line at one of the cashiers so I chose to go there. After ringing everything through, the young girl told me what I owed and I fumbled through my pocket to pull out the right bills to pay. In Zambia there are no coins, so I had to gather about 5 or 6 different bills to pay her. As I placed them one by one on the counter to build the pile, the clerk reached over and said 'can you put it in my hand?'.

I instantly assumed she was talking about the thick stack of money that was I was holding onto because I was a white man (muzungu) and she was the typical poor girl in Africa. It took about 10 seconds before I asked her what she meant, and she told me that she didn't want to reach out and take the money that was stacked on the counter. Instantly my mind flashed back to a time at the cheese shop in Calgary when an Italian lady clearly described to me how she had grown up knowing that it was rude to put change on the counter and make someone pick it up. Almost like it was a step towards throwing money on the ground and letting the beggars stoop to gather it.

(confusion)

I apologized to the cashier and walked away with a cramp in my chest from the idiocy that I had internally experienced. I was humbled because I didn't want to be on a white person's pedastool, I really want to show respect. Meanwhile, it can be easier to understand situations when you know how you are viewed. But not knowing how to distinguish between a young girl who is employed at an upper class grocery store from a girl that is walking down the street without any shoes is a tough lesson to learn.

At this moment I feel that was just like a crack of light escaping below the door and I'm about to open the door to discover how little I know about a culture so different from my own. Where I come from, I at least know the light is produced by electricity, in this new world I have yet to know something as fundamental as how the light is made let alone the details of what is in the room.

The one peace of advice that I've received and hold onto for dear life is that, no matter what, be "humble".


(still 10 days before I head to the rural NW corner of Zambia to life in the bush)

Some Photos

Starting off with a view 3 feet from my door. Yup, I'm being spoiled at the moment, staying at a guest house and eating really well while I get my bearings and meet some of the staff at Forest Fruits.

The pool is beside the guest house - although its out of service at the moment.

Our team during motorcycle training (less JP) - click for larger image.

as you enter the property

Gotta love the vegetation.

The honey warehouse, its full of 300kg barrels of honey!

Just thought I'd throw some pics up for those of you interested in what things look like where I am right now. I will be staying here for two more weeks before going to Mwinilunga.

A real post is soon to come.

Safely on The Ground

Getting there.

After spending Friday night on a plane to Amsterdam, then Saturday night trying to catch up on sleep on yet another flight, I woke up to the sun rising over a mountainous, sleepy looking Kenya. This photo almost captures it, my first view of Africa.

Sunrise over Kenya – Mount Kilamenjaro?

It is strange to think about all the preconceptions that I have created over my lifetime about an entire continent which I had never visited. Africa to me, up ‘til now, has been a mix of images of Safari’s, of starving children, of our government officials shaking hands with their officials, images of men walking down the street with guns, women collecting water … and all of it seemed inhospitable. There was one image that had also developed in parallel over the years, that is an image of the smiling mother with kids playing and possibly a big tree that didn’t resemble any tree I was familiar with in Canada.

Next we took a final flight into Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. Now it becomes real, I am here for a full 13 months and well, ya, I feel like a foreigner. Everyone is different, there are only 6 white people in the airport, 4 came with me, 1 is there to pick us up, and then there is me, I made 6. We step outside and instantly there is a warm refreshing breeze mixed with a level of humidity that reminds me of summer in southern Ontario.

Finally on the ground in Zambia

Arrival

So here I am, 2008, finally seeing with my own eyes what this mysterious place is like.

My 3 day overall impression is that the climate and the people make this place quite similar to what I would call a paradise. The daytime high is around 28 and the low is around 15. We are right in the middle of a huge city and still, when I look into the sky at night, I can see thousands of stars.

Our hostel (note: flipchart in background)

Today we went to a poorer region of the city and spoke with as many people as possible. Zambians, much like Canadians, hold the virtues of being friendly, nice and welcoming, quite high. I got to meet a couple of university students, a few school kids, some seemingly homeless kids, I met a shop owner, and said “muli bwanji” to many others passing by on the street. (Muli bwanji is ‘how are you’ in Chichewa/Nyanja)

The person I spoke with the most was a 30 year old women named Susan. She is jobless and a mother of three, she lost her husband to a car crash and can’t afford to send her kids to school but has faith in god to take care of her. She lives with her mother and whenever things aren’t going well she finds a way to get by and is more than happy to share her time and extra food when others are in need. Susan sang one of her gospel songs and wrote down her address…which isn’t an address at all, but rather instructions on how to find her.

Getting set up

I was surprised to see that there are at least 50 different places to buy a cell phone and they’re all within a 10 minute walk. Everyone has a cell phone! Internet access however is very difficult. Once I finally found an internet café, I sat down to discover that the computers worked fine but the internet was down. The electricity is on and off too.

The next biggest change that I have to get used to is all the attention. As a white person, you are far from unnoticed. Like the hot girl that walks into a bar, the eyes follow, necks are strained… but mostly people are friendly, sometimes they walk with you for a while, and other times people are only speaking to you because they want money and the kids are usually shy at first but mostly amused. It has been nice to see familiar faces though, especially Thulasy, who has been here for six months.

All of a sudden I feel like I am a high maintenance person. I have been told that Malaria and HIV are huge problems in Zambia, however, I have yet to see any evidence of either. Malaria is a disease that is passed on by mosquitoes and every year 500 million people get it, of them, 1 million die. The first sign of Malaria is a fever. To help prevent myself from getting this I sleep under a mosquito net, I wear bug spray and long pants at night and I am taking Larium.

My time so far has been a huge learning experience. I have to say that my smallest image of Africa, the one with smiling people and kids playing in the street is the one that is most apparent in my first few days.

Mark

One week 'til take off.

Here goes my second entry – and your second glimpse into what I’m thinking and experiencing as I near departure.

EWB is intense, which is great. I‘m not sure if I’ve ever learned so much in a one month before?

They keep teaching us big complex things such as - facilitation methods, various frameworks, concepts, tools… and intermingled among them all are words such as; approach, leverage, gender, culture, capital, transformative change, humility…all of which I am now able to speak at great lengths about what they mean and how they relate to the work I’ll be doing for the next year.

The Team

Meanwhile, I haven’t been doing this alone. Every step of the way there are 11 other people beside me, we eat together, walk together, train together and all of us live in the same 3 bedroom house in downtown Toronto. Lately we’ve been taking turns telling our life story. Each night, one of us sits down in front of the candle while the rest gather around. This person takes us all on a journey filled with personal challenges, their ups and downs with family, friends and of course, relationships. I highly recommend taking the time to do this with your grandparents or friends. So far they have been far more entertaining than any movie I’ve seen.

The team walking through a winter wonderland.

I also had the chance to get-out-of-town for a weekend. I went to the Hillside-Inside music festival in Guelph. Not only did I get to dance for 10 hours straight, but I saw and met people who are so caring and happy and sincere and ya, I just felt what it was like to belong to a harmonious community for a weekend.

So am I ready to go?

Surprisingly, I’d say yes. Maybe I'm a bit too comfortable with the idea? I sorta feel like I’m in the Truman Show and now it’s my turn to head off into the unknown world that I’ve only seen or read about. I want to see it with my own eyes, to hear the laughter of the children, to smell the forest and…well I guess its rainy season in Zambia, so maybe to taste the rain? How will it be different? I decided to look up annual precipitation trends for north-western province and found out that they have 116 days where it rains more than 10mm. This didn’t mean much to me until I looked at what it was in Vancouver, which in my mind is pretty wet, and they only have 39 of these days a year. (note to self – don’t forget rain jacket)

My checklist is almost done - I have a haircut, my Malaria meds, pictures of family and girlfriend, a journal, a camera and a ticket to fly. For sure I’m forgetting something.

It’s just hair.

(this paragraph is mostly for me)

We’ve been told to write down 10 things we love to do so that two months from now, when our ‘honeymoon’ phase is over and the culture shock hits, we can look back and see which things we are not doing. My ten things include – music, taking leisurely walks, reading, seeing the sun rise, seeing the moon rise, listening to stories, riding my bike, watching movies, seeing live music and taking pictures. I also enjoy seeing the northern lights, skating outside, hearing from Laure-Eloise and speaking to my mom…all of which I anticipate to be more difficult in a weeks time.

(this paragraph is for all of you that are interested in development)

What has been surprising so far?

• If you want to promote good hygiene practices, maybe it’s possible that Unilever (a multi-national food and soap company) is better positioned than anyone else to do this?
• Most things are common sense, however, there is a big difference between the theory of common sense and the application. (hence the 1 month of training req’d)
• The power of questioning – this is an extremely effective way to learn and to help others learn.
• The development sector is broken! Flat out. Aid money isn’t working and EWB is trying to improve it. The key issue here is accountability. Ask yourself - whose head rolls when a project fails overseas? How can feedback systems be used to improve this?

So it’s been a big month to say the least. My Grandpa passed away in January, which is tough, but I was able to say a proper goodbye before I left Calgary. He seemed to be very much at peace.

To prevent rambling, I'm going to sign off in hopes that you will check out my next update which is sure to be from the capital city of Lusaka in Zambia!

It'll be strange to leave Canada for such a long time. Up until now I've only left Canadian soil a handful of times, and never for more than two weeks.

All smiles.

Mark